Late in the Season

Late in the Season

Late in the Season

The first dense fog this morning, everything
indistinct. Small birds

flitting among stones at the waves’ edge; last night
along laneways and in the meadows,

heavy tractors laboured on, their headlights flaring;
among the sand dunes rabbits

played with cloudshadows from the moon; now a fox
in her potched, gold-chestnut fur

scents out her lost escape-ways through the lopped-down grass;
I have been picturing

a straight and solitary figure pacing the roads and shoreline
as if washed up onto the world

like jetsam flung by the breaking reach of the waves,
who has words to offer, words

in an antique language beautiful as moonlight and sharp
as the teeth of the mowers,

while the world feels for him, offering
unwanted coin.